Chelsea Academy

With over 1150 pupils and staff, London-based Chelsea Academy is an incredibly busy school. Their dedicated Finance Team required a system which offered total flexibility whilst streamlining operational tasks to support the smooth running of the school.

Before joining the Academy in 2018, Finance Director, Lucian Boyd-Harte, had previous experience with IRIS Financials and, as such, he realised the potential of the system for improving overall efficiency:

“I implemented IRIS Financials when I moved to the Chelsea Academy for a number of reasons. In the simplest terms, I love the IRIS Financials portal. It’s simple, user-friendly and flexible,” says Lucian. “Unlike other school finance systems, the portal doesn’t put up barriers, rather it takes them down, enabling users to access the reports and data they need with ease; budget holders can access budgets and reports without issue and workflow processing empowers our team to improve efficiency and streamline tasks.”

Whilst IRIS Financials is proven to support the smooth-running of financial processes for MATs, the sophisticated software empowers single academies to benefit from the advanced functionality.

“The system is designed with large educational organisations and Academies in mind, offering all the complex and flexible functionality a multi-academy trust requires. With that in mind, it’s amazing how simple and user-friendly the system is. It’s a powerful and intuitive platform which saves us time, every day.”

“For me, as Finance Director, one particular area of the system which stands out is the reporting functionality. I can access and manipulate large quantities of data quickly and easily, which saves significant time when creating ad hoc reports.”

“IRIS Financials offers unrivalled flexibility; I can drill down and backwards, gaining access to the nitty-gritty of our accounts. Even small things, such as the ability to interrogate previous periods; the system has it in hand, which is essential to month and year-end accounts. The richness of data combined with the ease of use is unlike anything else I’ve seen in almost 10 years of working in the sector.”

“The automation of procurement and invoicing has also had a very positive impact on day-to-day business. As a result, we’re able to process more transactions, more efficiently.”

“IRIS Financials has also relieved us of manual data entry. I input a number once, and IRIS Financials automatically applies that figure to everywhere it needs to be.”

“While I can’t put a number on the hours that IRIS Financials has saved my team, I can say that the system has enabled me to work smarter, rather than harder. It’s a highly intuitive system which I would recommend to any MAT or large Academy. Rather than requiring me, as the user, to carry out all the work, the system does it for me. It is by far the best system for the education sector.”

To learn more about our education management software and how IRIS Financials can help your academy or trust to improve efficiency, please get in touch.